Post navigation

Argentina: Clumsy Political Assassination?

Federal Prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita has requested to investigate President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman in the case that looks into the alleged cover-up of Iran’s role in the 1994 AMIA bombing.
Pollicita presented a 61-page report before Judge Daniel Rafefas, giving green light to the complaint first filed by now late AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman.
Ruling Victory Front (FpV) lawmaker Andrés Larroque, social leader Luis D’Elía, head of the political group Quebracho Fernando Esteche, ex judge Héctor Yrimia and Allan Bogado have been also charged.

Prosecutor Alberto Nisman drafted a warrant for the arrest of Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner shortly before being found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment, the New York Times reports. Nisman had been investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center, the Argentina Israelite Mutual Association, in which 85 people were killed. His body was found on the day he was scheduled to reveal evidence indicating that de Kirchner had refused to blame Iranian officials for the attack, apparently because Argentina wanted to preserve a trade relationship with Iran.

Nisman, from his end, concluded in a report published in 2006 that Hezbollah agents who had received planning and financial support from Iran were behind the attacks. Nisman attempted to have several top Iranian official extradited to stand trial. Iran always denied involvement in the case, and Tehran refused Nisman’s requests for extradition.

Nisman was found dead with a bullet to the head in his Buenos Aires home on Sunday, just before he was set to go before a congressional hearing to accuse Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman of shielding Iranian officials implicated in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people.

Before his demise, Nisman had filed a 280-page complaint charging that Kirchner had issued an “express directive” to shield a group of Iranian suspects in the 1994 bombing.
Nisman contended that the government had agreed to swap grain for oil with Tehran in exchange for withdrawing “red notices” to Interpol seeking the arrests of the former and current Iranian officials accused in the unsolved case.

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner said Thursday she believes that a prosecutor who died under suspicious circumstances was murdered in a plot to implicate her government in a cover-up of a 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center.

In a post on her Facebook page, Kirchner contended that Nisman was killed to immerse her government in scandal after he had been “used” to publicly accuse her of involvement in the cover-up.
“I’m convinced that it was not suicide,” Kirchner said.
“The true operation against the government was the prosecutor’s death after accusing the president, her foreign minister, and the secretary-general of (her political faction) of covering up for the Iranians accused in the AMIA attack,” she said.

#

A prosecutor who accused Argentina’s president of trying to derail the investigation into a 1994 bombing (Iran involvement and Fernandezs’ allies now), and who died in mysterious circumstances on Sunday, was misled to believe there was a conspiracy to whitewash the crime, the government said on Wednesday.
State prosecutor Alberto Nisman, the lead investigator into the 1994 car bomb attack that killed 85 people at a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, was found dead in his apartment late on Sunday, hours before he was scheduled to present his case to Congress.
A 22-caliber pistol was found at his side and Nisman appears to have committed suicide, but many of the details of the case are unclear and allegations of foul play have surged. He died just a few days after accusing President Cristina Fernandez of trying to hamper his probe.
A top government official said on Wednesday that Nisman was tricked into believing that two men who formed the backbone of his case against President Cristina Fernandez were government spies.

Antonio Stiusso, a senior Argentine spy, was fired in a December shake-up of the intelligence service, where one of his duties had been to help Nisman with the investigation into the 1994 bombing.

Argentine courts accuse Iran of sponsoring the 1994 bombing and secured Interpol arrest warrants for five Iranians. Iran’s government has denied any involvement.
Nisman said last week that Fernandez wanted to whitewash the bombing and normalize relations with Iran in order to trade Argentine grains for Iranian oil. Argentina has a $7 billion annual energy gap, complicating the government’s efforts to jumpstart a faltering economy